Mayors Of Miyazaki: Holy Cop – album review

Mayors Of Miyazaki are a DIY 3-piece based in south london. They describe their second album as a melodic, unpredictable math-punk assault and released it earlier this year. Louder Than War’s Adrian Bloxham has been listening, read what he thinks below

Mayors of Miyazaki are from London and they have possibly the coolest name I have reviewed so far this year. They mash together a memory of US grunge looseness, a blast of cool from British indie and the unpredictability of the post hardcore Washington bands. In my head they seem to want to confront me, but do so with a smile. They are very British in feel with an international, right of this moment, sound.

The band sound discordant and at odds with each other for most of the album, the vocals are mainly shouted or sung hard. For the first three tracks they sound almost like they are vying to win an argument as they shout each other down, this matches the brooding, spiky music that shudders and broods. The tracks leave you reeling; they slam into you then ease off and engulf you in a feeling of menace. They use subtle sounds to lead into noise then dissipate into quiet again, they then wobble your head further by getting all jazzy on your ass, and this lot want your head gone. The overriding feel is of the power of sound, the way it’s all built together is masterful.

The fourth track ’Tongues’ is where the vocals start to merge together as if they’ve agreed to disagree on their dispute and are working as one. The rhythm is by now making your head nod and get inside you. They get softer with ‘Parts Per Million’ and positively bright and sunny in ‘Dry Palm’ where the jazz beat comes across again. It’s also in the last track ‘Mortise + Tenon’ where the brightness is slipping away into dark menace.

But they haven’t softened really, with both ‘Human Resources’ and ‘Get a Hobby’ being as hard as nails and ever so slightly deranged. But the my best track on the album is the full on rant of ‘Muy Sexo’ with its grinding bassy perfect riff, that kicks in with the best line in a song almost ever ‘Come on you Fucking Pillheads!’ as the music breaks again into a that hardcore sound to die for.

I hope this scrap of writing gives a feel of the pure joy of this release, they are giving you music that doesn’t back down or compromise, it just gets deep into your head and you wonder just how they managed to hold it all together for this long when for most of the album it feels like it’s all going to fall apart.

Mayors Of Miyazaki’s website is here and they can be found on Facebook here.

All words by Adrian Bloxham. More writing by Adrian on Louder Than War can be found here.